Mahabharata Book Six Volume 1

“Bhishma,” the sixth book of the eighteen-book epic The Maha•bhárata, narrates the first ten days of the great war between the Káuravas and the Pándavas. This first volume covers four days from the beginning of the great battle and includes the famous “Bhágavad•gita (“The Song of the Lord”), presented here within its original epic context. In this “bible” of Indian civilization the charioteer Krishna empowers his disciple Árjuna to resolve his personal dilemma: whether to follow his righteous duty as a warrior and slay his opponent relatives in the just battle, or to abstain from fighting and renounce the warrior code to which he is born. “Bhishma,” the sixth book of the eighteen-book epic The Maha•bhárata, narrates the first ten days of the great war between the Káuravas and the Pándavas. This first volume covers four days from the beginning of the great battle and includes the famous “Bhágavad•gita (“The Song of the Lord”), presented here within its original epic context. In this “bible” of Indian civilization the charioteer Krishna empowers his disciple Árjuna to resolve his personal dilemma: whether to follow his righteous duty as a warrior and slay his opponent relatives in the just battle, or to abstain from fighting and renounce the warrior code to which he is born.

This second half of Bhishma describes the events from the beginning of the fifth day till the end of the tenth of the great battle between the Káuravas and the Pándavas. Despite grandfather Bhishma’s appeal to conclude peace with the Pándavas, Duryódhana continues the bloody battle. The key strategist is general Bhishma, commander of the Káurava forces. Even though he is compelled to fight on the side of the Káuravas, Bhishma’s sympathies are with the Pándavas. After the ninth day of war, when Bhishma has wreaked havoc with their troops, the Pándavas realise that they will be unable to win as long as invincible Bhishma is alive. Bhishma willingly reveals to them how he can be destroyed. Strictly observing the warrior code, he will never fight with Shikhándin, because he was originally born a woman. Bhishma advises the Pándava brothers that Árjuna should strike him from behind Shikhándin’s back, and they follow the grandfather’s advice.

Sanskrit classical epic translated into English.

Epic: Maha·bhárata The Maha·bhárata tells the tale of the epic battle between the Pándavas and the Káuravas for the thrown. It begins with the famous game of dice between the Pándavas and the Káuravas, which sets the scene for the war that will lie at the center of the Maha·bhárata epic. But even after the war is ostensibly over when the heroic but flawed king of the Káuravas is dishonor­ably defeated in battle by his arch enemy, the extended family is still wracked in conflict leaving survivors, victors and vanquished struggling to comprehend their loss. Perhaps the most enigmatic philosophical text from ancient India, the final book in the set, “The Book of Liberation” is presented as the teachings of Bhishma as he lies dying on the bat­tlefield in the aftermath of war. Included in this set: Maha·bhárata Book II: The Great Hall Translated by Paul Wilmot. 588 pages / 978-0-8147-9406-7 Maha·bhárata Book III: The Forest Volume 4 Translated by William Johnson. 374 pages / 978-0-8147-4278-5 Maha·bhárata Book IV: Viráta Translated by Kathleen Garbutt. 516 pages / 978-0-8147-3183-3 Maha·bhárata Book V: Preparations for War Volume 1 Translated by Kathleen Garbutt. Foreword by Gurcharan Das. 720 pages / 978-0-8147-3191-8 Maha·bhárata Book V: Preparations for War Volume 2 Translated by Kathleen Garbutt. 760 pages / 978-0-8147-3202-1 Maha·bhárata Book VI: Bhishma Translated by Alex Cherniak. Foreword by Ranajit Guha. Volume 1 (Including the “Bhagavad Gita” in Context) 615 pages / 978-0-8147-1696-0 Maha·bhárata Book VI: Bhishma Volume 2 Translated by Alex Cherniak. 550 pages / 978-0-8147-1705-9 Maha·bhárata Book VII: Drona Volume 1 Translated by Vaughan Pilikian. 473 pages / 978-0-8147-6723-8 Maha·bhárata Book VII: Drona Volume 2 Translated by Vaughan Pilikian. 470 pages / 978-0-8147-6776-4 Maha·bhárata Book VIII: Karna Volume 1 Translated by Adam Bowles 604 pages / 978-0-8147-9981-9 Maha·bhárata Book VIII: Karna Volume 2 Translated by Adam Bowles. 684 pages / 978-0-8147-9995-6 Maha·bhárata Book IX: Shalya Volume 1 Translated by Justin Meiland. 371 pages / 978-0-8147-5706-2 Maha·bhárata Book IX: Shalya Volume 2 Translated by Justin Meiland. 470 pages / 978-0-8147-5737-6 Maha·bhárata Books X & XI: “Dead of the Night” and “The Women” Translated by Kate Crosby. 350 pages / 978-0-8147-1727-1 Maha·bhárata Book XII: Peace (Part 2: The Book of Liberation) Volume 3 Translated by Alex Wynne. 540 pages / 978-0-8147-9453-1

This second half of Bhishma describes the events from the beginning of the fifth day till the end of the tenth of the great battle between the Káuravas and the Pándavas. Despite grandfather Bhishma's appeal to conclude peace with the Pándavas, Duryódhana continues the bloody battle. The key strategist is general Bhishma, commander of the Káurava forces. Even though he is compelled to fight on the side of the Káuravas, Bhishma's sympathies are with the Pándavas. After the ninth day of war, when Bhishma has wreaked havoc with their troops, the Pándavas realise that they will be unable to win as long as invincible Bhishma is alive. Bhishma willingly reveals to them how he can be destroyed. Strictly observing the warrior code, he will never fight with Shikhándin, because he was originally born a woman. Bhishma advises the Pándava brothers that Árjuna should strike him from behind Shikhándin's back, and they follow the grandfather's advice.

After Bhishma is cut down at the end of the previous book of the Maha·bhárata, the book which bears his name, Duryódhana selects Drona as leader of his forces. Drona accepts the honor with Bhishma's blessing, despite his ongoing personal conflicts as mentor to both the Pándava and Káurava heroes in their youth. The fighting rages on, with heavy losses on both sides. Furious and frustrated, Duryódhana accuses Drona of collaborating with the enemy, but he replies that as long as Árjuna is on the field, the Pándavas will remain invincible. When Árjuna is finally diverted from the main action of the battle, Yudhi·shthira entrusts Árjuna's son Abhimányu with the task of making a breach in the Káurava formation. Abhimányu rampages through Drona's army, but at last is cornered by several Káurava warriors and finally killed by Jayad·ratha. Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org

The Mahabharata is the greatest epic of India. Anyone who has studied the Bhagavad Gita, which represents only 700 verses from the Mahabharata (out of 200,000 total) must be interested in reading the whole book. When I was a Hare Krishna devotee I certainly wished I could do that. Several summaries of the Mahabharata exist, but it is impossible to condense eighteen books into one without omitting anything worthwhile. The only complete English translation of the book is this one, by Kisari Mohan Ganguli. These volumes are based on a text file scanned at sacred-texts.com, 2003, and proofed at Distributed Proofing, Juliet Sutherland, Project Manager. Additional proofing and formatting of the text file was done at sacred-texts.com, by J. B. Hare. If you have a Kindle you can read this translation without cost by downloading it from http://www.gutenberg.org/. Amazon.com also has their own versions of these books which you may download and read for free. While reading these free e-books I decided that I really wanted a bound and printed version. I felt this book deserved to be back in print, so I decided to prepare it for publishing using Create Space and offer it for sale at the lowest possible price. I have moved the footnotes in these volumes (hundreds of them) from the end of the book back to the bottoms of the pages for easier reading. I have replaced archaic words like "behoveth" with "behooves", etc., where it was possible to do so without rewriting the sentences where they appear. I have also fixed a few variant spellings, and replaced obscure words like "welkins" and "horripliated" with more common ones. Finally, the original work did not translate the titles of the individual books, so I have used the names found on Wikipedia. Thus Adi Parva in the original becomes The Book Of The Beginning. The illustrations are from a Hindi translation of the Mahabharata that has also fallen into the public domain. (http://openlibrary.org/books/OL23365037M/Mahabharata.) I have used page images provided at archive.org and have cleaned them up using The GIMP software. The results speak for themselves. When all the volumes are published (probably twelve or so) there will be nearly 300 full page illustrations. In short, I have spared no effort to make this the most complete, most readable, and most attractive edition of the Mahabharata in English. While I no longer practice the Vaishnava religion I hope that these books will meet with the approval of my former godbrothers and godsisters. I do not believe that they will find anything offensive in them. BHAKTA JIM

V.1. "'Bhishma, ' the sixth book of the eighteen-book epic "Maha·bhárata," narrates the first ten days of the great war between the Káuravas and the Pándavas. This first volume covers four days from the beginning of the great battle and includes the famous "Bhagavad Gita" ("Song of the Lord"), presented here within its original epic context. In this "bible" of Indian civilisation the charioteer Krishna empowers his disciple Árjuna to resolve his personal dilemma: whether to follow his righteous duty as a warrior and slay his opponent relatives in the just battle, or to abstain from fighting and renounce the warrior code to which he is born. The "Gita" culmintates in Krishna's theophany, when he reveals himself in the horrendous form of Death as the all-devouring fire of Time, a manifestation famously echoed by Oppenheimer when he witnessed the first atom bomb exploding.